5 months ago

A week ago, we were all but ready to hand New Mexico the regular season title and the #1 seed in the Mountain West tournament. Two road losses later, the Lobos have given back their two-game lead and with two conference games remaining on everybody’s schedule, we have five teams within two games of the first place. But, primarily, we are back to where we were after the first run through the conference: three teams (New Mexico, San Diego State and UNLV) tied atop the conference standings, each looking like a good team, but none looking great.

Still, despite the tumult at the top of the conference, all three of those teams look like absolute locks to earn an invitation to the NCAA Tournament (and pretty good seeds at that). UNLV leads the way with an RPI of 11, while SDSU and UNM are among a bunch of MW teams with RPIs in the late 20s or early 30s. The big question in the conference revolves around the third of those teams, Colorado State, which sits ahead of the other two with an RPI of 27 (SDSU is at 28, UNM at 34).

However, a closer look at the Rams find them sitting squarely on the bubble. They have a couple really good wins over SDSU and UNM, but those two games are the entirety of their positives. Beyond that they have some middling wins over RPI 51-100 teams and an unfortunate last second loss to Boise State (RPI 166) dragging them down. However, compare them to say, BYU, South Florida, Washington, or Arizona – all teams with whom the Rams are ostensibly competing for a spot, and CSU’s got a slightly better set of numbers going for them. See below, where we compare CSU to other bubble teams in record, RPI, strength of schedule, and record against various subsets of the RPI (with the best numbers in each column in bold). In RPI and SOS, the Rams have clearly better numbers than anybody else on this list, while their record against top-50 RPI teams is behind only Dayton and Saint Joseph’s here.

Team

Record

RPI

SOS

vs. RPI 1-25

vs. RPI 1-50

vs. RPI +100

Colorado State

16-10

26

5

0-3

2-5

10-2

Arizona

21-9

71

110

0-2

1-3

17-1

BYU

22-7

50

113

1-3

1-5

17-2

Dayton

18-10

60

54

2-0

3-3

10-3

Miami

17-10

47

38

2-4

2-7

13-0

Northwestern

17-11

40

10

1-6

2-9

11-0

Oregon

20-8

52

79

0-1

0-5

18-1

South Florida

17-11

45

30

0-5

1-7

12-3

St. Joseph’s

19-11

51

34

1-1

2-5

12-3

Washington

20-8

53

81

0-2

0-4

17-0

As for TCU, the team that is almost the hottest team in the conference, having won four of five including wins over Colorado State, UNLV and New Mexico, with only a last-second loss to Boise State as a recent blemish … they’re a good story, but even with four wins against top-50 RPI teams, they need to win the Mountain West Tournament to have a chance to go dancing.

Team of the Week

TCU – As mentioned above, the Horned Frogs are 4-1 in their last five games, with only a heartbreaking last-second loss to Boise State a week ago as a strike against them. This week, Jim Christian’s club went to Colorado Springs and, using an Amric Fields three-pointer with 18 seconds left, knocked off Air Force at Clune Arena. They followed that up by welcoming New Mexico into Fort Worth on Saturday and outfighting and outshooting the Lobos. Six different Frogs hit three-pointers, J.R. Cadot outworked Drew Gordon on the offensive glass and Hank Thorns dished out nine assists as TCU battled New Mexico to a draw on the boards and outgunned them from the field (they had a true shooting percentage of 63.1%). As a result, TCU sits just a game back of the three leaders in the conference and with a visit from SDSU scheduled for Saturday, they have a fighting chance of moving up the leaderboard even further.

Player of the Week

Jamaal Franklin, Sophomore, San Diego State – With apologies to TCU’s J.R. Cadot (15.5 PPG, 11.5 RPG), we are going to reward Franklin for his transcendent game while willing his Aztecs over CSU on Saturday night. In that game, Franklin went off for 31 points and 16 rebounds (the latter a new career high, the former tying a career high) and scored 13 of his team’s last 16 points, including going 8-of-8 from the free-throw line after the final media timeout. Coupled with a solid game earlier in the week when coming back from an ankle injury against Wyoming, Franklin, who averaged 21.5 points and 10.5 rebounds, earned the honor.

Brian Joyce is an RTC correspondent. He filed this report after Saturday’s Tulsa-TCU game.

TCU led a valiant second half comeback against Conference USA foe Tulsa, but dropped the ball on New Year’s Eve. The Horned Frogs only managed 36.7% shooting on their way to a 74-66 loss to the Golden Hurricane. While TCU was undersized, it showed some fight. TCU forced Tulsa into 19 turnovers and managed to get to the free throw line a season-best 35 times, but it just wasn’t enough. As the Horned Frogs expect to make the jump to the Big 12 Conference for the 2012-13 season, it is clear that the program has a long road ahead to become competitive in a power conference.

Those empty seats in Daniel Meyer Coliseum won't fill up just to watch the Frogs lose

TCU has a number of issues to work out before becoming a Big 12 caliber team:

Size: Size is a huge issue for head coach Jim Christian’s squad. The Horned Frogs don’t have a single player that stands above 6’10”. TCU’s starting lineup on Saturday featured players standing at 5’9″, 5’11”, 6’5″, 6’7″ and 6’8″. Tulsa took advantage of its size advantage by posting both of its 6’4″ starting guards on the smaller TCU backcourt. Tulsa’s 6’4″ starting point guard Jordan Clarkson cruised on his way to a 23- point performance, guarded mostly by smaller players. When Christian subbed in the taller and more physical Nate Butler to guard Clarkson, the Frogs held Tulsa’s point guard to five points in over 18 minutes of second half play. But then presumably for an offensive boost in crunch time, Christian subbed in 5’9″ Hank Thorns and 5’11” Kyan Anderson to play on the floor at the same time. Clarkson shot over the smaller defenders for a crucial two-pointer with 1:31 remaining to give Tulsa the lead. He scored another four points in the closing seconds to seal the victory. The Golden Hurricane also established a dominating post presence as they started two players at 6’11”. Forward Kodi Maduka (one of the 6″11″ posts) scored 15 points and grabbed 15 rebounds as TCU didn’t have an answer for him. A product of its smaller lineup, TCU grabbed just 51% of available defensive rebounds as it was out-rebounded 35-27 on the night. With the length and strength of frontcourts in the Big 12, the Horned Frogs have a lot of recruiting to look the part of a power conference team.